


Not Dying, Just in Love

by yankee_jim



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Fluff, Gay, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, WWII AU, World War 2, its kinda sad but don't worry it ends bitter sweet, kind of, shyan, shyan fluff, shyanlibrary, well kind of fluff mostly just a lotta love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yankee_jim/pseuds/yankee_jim
Summary: “I think I’m dying,” Shane admitted between heavy breaths but Ryan just laughed. Shane did not expect Ryan to think he was joking, but Ryan did. So Shane laughed too, even though gardens danced between his organs, threatening to cruelly and beautifully end his life."ORA World War Two AU where Shane has something that is kind of like Hahanaki disease and is falling in love with Ryan. Flowers are growing all over Shane's body, slowly killing him. The only way to get rid of them is to tell there person you are in love with that you love them, but he cannot tell that to Ryan because they will both be sentenced to death for loving another man.





	1. Sweet Bubblegum, Sweet Lips

  
  


            From his window high on the second floor of his townhouse, Shane watched the young man with the charcoal hair skip along the cobblestone street below. Sometimes an ebony volkswagen or a tall soldier or the simple hustle and bustle of the streets would obstruct Shane’s view of him. But most days, the man would galavant down a deserted street, empty handed one way, and come back later with a sack full of brilliantly neon fruits that contrasted greatly with the dying world around him. 

Shane didn’t know where the man whom he watched so intently each day was coming from or going to, he only knew of his carefree smile and auroral eyes. Shane found himself wishing that, just once, the man would look up. Perhaps he would simply nod at Shane, wave a hand or reveal his grin that was so distinct against the backdrop of the war-ridden country. Shane had thought about spitting out his window, hopefully causing him to look up. Not with cruelty, but rather with curiosity as to what the man’s gaze felt like upon his cheeks. 

Then it happened, the hint of pain suffocating his ankle, threatening to break through his already worn jeans. Shane lifted his pant-leg slightly to expose nothing but his bare skin and a frail poppy budding from beneath it, like a drowning man finally coming up for air. Though small, it flourished instantly, growing into its elegant crimson petals. Shane dropped the cuff of his jeans to cover up the lonesome flower and returned to gaze out the window, only to see the man with the hair that was the colour of an inky raven had left. The floweret blossoming under his clothes reminded Shane of himself, sitting alone on the second floor of his townhouse, watching the bustling street and drumming up stories for the people he saw. 

There was an elderly man that traversed the avenue almost as often as the raven man did. He would stop the young children who were latched onto their mothers’ legs to give them a piece of Parkies bubble gum, then he would wait to leave until they had read the comic that came inside the wrapper. Although Shane was not a boy anymore, he often yearned for that old man to throw a piece of bubblegum up at him, to taste the syrupy flavour of childhood against his tongue. He wished he could throw on his overcoat and walk across to the store to buy his own gum, but he couldn’t. Shane could already apprehend the events that would occur if he stepped outside into the noon day sun. 

He would smile at the sandy-haired man who stood waiting for the bus every day, or nod at the butcher who seemed to carry his scathing knife everywhere he went, or brush shoulders with the short man who enjoyed collecting extra change from people on the street even though they themselves were as poor as he was. Then, he would be watched. He would smile a lustful smile or brush a man’s shoulder with sexual implication and then he would be watched. Shane didn’t know who would watch him, but he knew they would. He would go out to the bar, buy himself a drink with the little money he had, and end up with his hands tangled devotedly in the hair of a gentleman he had met just that night. After that, he would be taken from his home that overlooked the quaint street and to a roaring fire where he would be burned to nothing but ash or maybe a field where he would be shot through the heart. 

So Shane didn’t go across the street to get himself bubblegum.

* * *

 

            The army came knocking on his door the next morning. There were letters and uniforms and men who, although tall, didn’t quite reach Shane’s height. He was brought to the docks with hundreds of others. Shane didn’t feel brave enough to be in possession of the forest green uniform that was slapped on his back, or the ink black infantry rifle that was placed in his hands. 

In the sea of dull, verdant bodies, he spotted the man, standing woefully on the edge of the dock, waiting for the incoming ship that would take them away to the war. The man’s black hair glistened in the sun and from the sharp pain that burdened Shane’s other ankle, he knew exactly who the glistening man was. The more Shane’s feet carried themselves towards him, the more painful his body became, as if it were littered with cigarette burns. But there was no smell of burning flesh, just the honeyed fragrance of innocent daisies beneath his clothes. Shane could not show weakness to the pain that engulfed his being. As he strided closer to the Raven Man, he was becoming unsure if the pain had its source in the ever blooming flowers that rose from under his skin or his wildly beating heart. 

He stood there for a few moments, next to the man he had been yearning to see close up, unnoticed. Then their eyes found each other and even though he was about to be shipped off to the battlefield, Shane’s world seemed to fill with intense colour that reminded him of the fruits the Raven Man picked up daily from the grocery store.

“Off to war, huh?” Shane said, feeling soft petals between his fingertips.

“I guess so,” the man replied wistfully, turning his gaze to the grand ship that was cascading towards them.

“I’m Shane,” he said with a slight smile, sticking out his hand towards the man, the possibility of being watched leaving his mind and sinking to the bottom of the sea.

“Ryan,” the man said back with a grin that had outsized Shane’s. Shane was glad the Raven Man finally had a name. He imagined being perched once again in his window, looking over the edge of the rusted sill, seeing Ryan with his signature basket of fruits slung over his shoulder.

“Ryan!” Shane would call down. And Ryan would meet his gaze and the world would fall into perfect harmony. Ryan would drop his bag of fruit and burst through Shane’s door. Shane would grab him by the belt loops of his casual sporting jeans and pull him against his mouth. But instead they had just met on the dock, waiting for a ship that would take them to their deaths.

  
  



	2. Tripping Over Wildflowers

            They sat side by side in the dimly lit tent, their legs hanging lazily off the short beds that would grant them with sleep later that night. Shane would not fit those beds.

The eerie sounds of distant gunshots danced through the thick canvas of the tent and infiltrated Shane’s ears. When Ryan told Shane that he was scared, Shane held him close and told him it would be okay, even though flower stems were prodding at his own lungs and he was unable to breathe.

That night, when the candle had been blown out and Ryan’s soft breathing replaced the sound of explosions and severed limbs and the far-off cries of wounded soldiers, Shane gracefully unbuttoned his uniform and looked at himself in the small wooden mirror his mother had found in their neighbours garbage can and decided to keep. Bright red poppies outpoured from his chest, each time he took a breath he felt their roots tugging at his heart strings.

When Ryan awoke at midnight to throw up into a tin bucket that sat at his bedside, Shane lit the candle and placed a warm hand on Ryan’s naked back even though it caused his own back to be triumphed by red poppies that resembled the colour of the wine the two of them had gulped down earlier that evening.

When Ryan told Shane he was scared of losing him to the war Shane intertwined their fingers and told him the war was not what he would lose him to, even though it made his throat close up with petals, forcing him to stumble outside the tent and leave a beautiful garden on the dirt.

* * *

            Shane fought. He fought the uniformed men that stood handsomely across no man’s land with shaking fingers and guns in their hands. He fought the sixteen year old boys who lied about their age to get to war and now stood in the middle of the battlefield crying for their mothers, he fought the men with guns who loved other men, who were just like him.

He ached for the taste of bubblegum in his mouth and then for the taste of Ryan on his lips and he tripped over the wildflowers that were falling from his shoes and it hurt.

It hurt because Shane thought was going to die that day, he was going to be shot through the heart and he would’ve never been able to tell Ryan that he loved him. He wanted to tell Ryan that a garden was blooming in his chest because of him, that he was slowly dying because of him, but if he did, Ryan would die too because he would be killed for holding the hand of another man. So Shane didn’t tell him. He continued to be overrun by the handsome garden of poppies because he would die for Ryan to continue living.

* * *

            He gazed at Ryan who dopily scanned the pages of the poetry book he was reading.

“Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there. I do not sleep,” Ryan read softly. He looked at Shane with the look he always gave, laced with longing and sadness and Shane hoped not love.

“I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain,” Ryan continued as Shane moved to sit next to him on the bed. Their knees brushed and their breath intermingled and Shane gripped the sheets violently between his fingers as his chest burned with the pain of his lungs slowly turning into blossoming inflorescence.

“When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night,” Ryan breathed.

“Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.”

Then Ryan’s breath hitched and he tilted his head back, trying desperately to keep the tears from rolling down his face.

“That’s a nice poem, isn’t it?” He sputtered. Shane chuckled softly, his eyes growing heavy with the luscious vines that wrapped around his brain.

“It is,” he replied. Ryan coughed and moaned and cried. A grown man crying in a tent because he was afraid of dying.

“I’m afraid of dying,” he said. “Even more, I’m afraid of you dying.”

Shane laughed and brushed the charcoal hair out of Ryan’s eyes and said he would not die and he lied because he knew any day now, the bright red poppies would take over, he would lay down on the dewy grass of the blood covered field and become a bed of wildflowers for soldiers to trample over with their thick black boots. He wanted to say to Ryan that he wished it were not poppies growing through his body because he didn’t want to remember the fallen soldiers he only wanted to remember Ryan.

“I don’t want to be planted in a Victory Garden,” he would say.

“I want to be planted on the Irish Bluffs with you.”

He wanted to say that, “at least if I die as a flowerbed, I can die with you lying next to me without getting my blood on your clothes.”

But he didn’t say any of it, instead he found Ryan’s eyes and flickered his gaze to his lips and pressed them against his own. He tasted an accumulation of salt and honey and he hoped he didn’t taste love.

He pressed his hand to Ryan’s chest and felt his heartbeat quicken, and felt his own slow. His eyes grew heavy with petals that weighed down on them like dead weights, but he continued to move his mouth in time with the Raven Man’s. He wanted to whisper _I love you_ against his lips.

Shane ran his hand under Ryan’s shirt and up to his chest and his breaths became short and sporadic. Shane was sure he would have to stop, lay down on the scratchy wool duvet and watch Ryan’s eyes grow wide as he saw Shane melt away into nothing but decaying petals. The only thing that kept him alive was Ryan pulling away, cheeks flushed a fuschia that reminded Shane of the poppies that grew so hatefully beneath his clothes. They lay down next to one another on the bed, studying the shadows that danced around the tent, fumbling with each others fingers.

“I think I’m dying,” Shane admitted between heavy breaths but Ryan just laughed. Shane did not expect Ryan to think he was joking, but Ryan did. So Shane laughed too, even though gardens danced between his organs, threatening to cruelly and beautifully end his life.

* * *

            He was growing weak and sick, but he still fought. The day was becoming grey and the battlefield soon lay quiet, for it was now a graveyard of the unburied. Soldier’s corpses lay among the buttercups and forget-me-nots. What bothered Shane the most as he stumbled, a colourful man blooming with poppies, amongst the lifeless grey bodies, was that the sun still shone and the wind still blew, but somewhere mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters waited in vain. These men around him that were once boys who played in the yard with sticks and chewed on bubblegum from the store across the street were now meat for the birds.

There were so few of them still standing, as if they were lifeboats from a sunken ship, lost in the middle of the great sea. Shane, although his breathing became short, laughed as he thought of Ryan.

Then, Ryan was by his side, standing right next to him as Shane sputtered petals from his laughing mouth.

Their own army general then grabbed Ryan firmly by his arm and took him to a quiet spot. Shane watched him being dragged away, yearning to run after him and to kiss him one last time, but he quickly stopped breathing as his lungs filled up with flowers, or maybe now it was just cold, dirty water. A raven watched Shane from the branches of a dead tree as he staggered aimlessly after Ryan, following his cries of protest.

Then he heard it, a gunshot cracked into the air as loud as thunder, but without the raw power of a storm, without the power the familiar cry that came afterwards had. To the other remaining soldiers, that sound was just another death, just another mother’s son buried, but to Shane, it was the collapsing of his heart.

Tears stung his eyes as he made it to the quiescent clearing, to see Ryan bathed in his own blood, breathing his final breaths as he lay handsomely against the wet grass that grew wild and untamed around him.

Shane lay down next to him. Ryan breathed heavily, struggling to hold onto life and Shane told him stories about how him and his mother used to make necklaces from scratch with shells they found on the beach and stories about how Shane used to watch him from his second floor window.

When Ryan told him, between gasps for air, staring blankly into the sky, that he was scared of dying, Shane intertwined their fingers and told him he wasn’t dying, that he was just in love. So Ryan smiled his carefree smile that was so distinct against the backdrop of the war-ridden country. He squeezed Shane’s hand lightly and his eyes fluttered closed.

Shane watched as a single poppy pushed itself out from under Ryan’s chest, followed by a sea of other wildflowers. Shane lay his head down in the grass, and told the flower bed lying next to him that he loved him. But it was too late. So he squeezed Ryan’s hand that had now turned to soil and blew out thousands of crimson petals from his own lips, watching as they danced away in the gentle breeze in a way he wished he could have danced with Ryan to soft music that played from an out of tune phonograph that would have stood in their kitchen.

“I’m not dying,” he said softly to himself.

“Just in love.”

 


End file.
